ICT106 Data Communications and Networks - Network Design Report

This document presents a network design report for Top Network Company (TNC), addressing the needs of its three departments: Administration, Marketing, and Sales. The design incorporates a local area network (LAN) with separate VLANs for each department, redundant links for increased uptime, and an IP addressing plan to accommodate the required number of workstations. The report details the LAN topology, including the use of hierarchical network design principles, and discusses various protocols such as SMTP, HTTPS, ICMP, and SNMP for secure data communication and network management. Furthermore, the document outlines the selected hardware, including Cisco routers and switches, justifying their selection based on features, ports, and suitability for the organization's needs. The report concludes by summarizing the developed network solution and emphasizing the importance of user-centered design principles in creating an efficient and secure network infrastructure for TNC.

Running head: ICT106 DATA COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS
Network Design Report
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author’s Note

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ICT106 DATA COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS
Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................2
2. Local Area Network: Design and description of the local area network...............................2
2.1. LAN Design showing workstation and interconnected devices.....................................2
2.2. LAN topology and Protocols..........................................................................................4
3. Hardware................................................................................................................................5
4. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................6
Bibliography...............................................................................................................................8

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1. Introduction
Currently Top Network Company (TNC) had its office in a three storied building and
it has three departments each allocated a separate floor. There are 84 workstation connected
at the Administration department, 170in the marketing floor and 255 in the Sales floor. Each
of the department of the organisation used separate application server for the management of
data and the data is needed to be transferred to the other department for increasing the
efficiency of communication. The access of internet is needed to be provided to all the
workstation and the local area network is developed following the requirement of the
organization. An Ip addressing plan and a design for the local area network is created after
the identification of the requirement. The user centred design principles are followed for the
development of the network design. Users connected in different department are provided
access to the WEB and the Email server installed in the DMZ zone of the network.
2. Local Area Network: Design and description of the local area network
2.1. LAN Design showing workstation and interconnected devices

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The above network diagram is created following the requirement of the organization
and for each of the floors separate switches are used and a central switch is used which is
needed to be configured with VTP server and VLAN with the name of the department. The
configuration of the switch with server helps in transmitting the VLAN information to the
layer 2 switch that are connected with it. The IP address is subnetted into three subnet such
that each of the department have different range of IP address. The router is also needed to be
configured with DHCP pool for automatically assigning the IP address to each of the VLAN.
Redundant link are used for interconnecting the network device such that the network uptime
is increased and the risk of packer loss, jitter and congestion in the network is eliminated.
IP addressing Plan
Network Address: 192.168.100.0/22
Number of IP addresses available in major subnet: 1022
Required number of IP addresses: 510

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ICT106 DATA COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS
Number of IP addresses available in allocated subnets: 890
About 88% of major network address space available is used
About 57% of subnetted network address space is used
Subnet
Name
Need
ed
Size
Alloca
ted
Size
Address Ma
sk
Dec Mask Assignable
Range
Broadcast
Administr
ation
85 126 192.168.1
03.0
/25 255.255.25
5.128
192.168.10
3.1 -
192.168.10
3.126
192.168.10
3.127
Marketing 170 254 192.168.1
02.0
/24 255.255.25
5.0
192.168.10
2.1 -
192.168.10
2.254
192.168.10
2.255
Sales 255 510 192.168.1
00.0
/23 255.255.25
4.0
192.168.10
0.1 -
192.168.10
1.254
192.168.10
1.255
2.2. LAN topology and Protocols
The local area network is developed for covering the building and connect each of the
workstation such as the servers, computers and the printing device for exchanging files and
information between each other. A hierarchical network design is followed for the

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development of the local area network and it is an useful network design tool for the
development of the network infrastructure. The network is developed with the application of
modularity, resiliency and flexibility such that the abnormal conditions can be handled.
There are different LAN protocols that works in the different layers of the OSI model.
The specification of the LAN is needed to be identified for the implementation of the
networking protocols and configure the network following the needs of the organization. The
protocols are used for creating a formal policy and standard comprising procedures, formats
and rules for defining the communication between the network devices connected in the
Local Area network. The protocols are used for governing the end to end processes for
securing and management of the data communication. The email servers connected in the
network is needed to be configured with SMTP protocol and the WEB server would be
configured with HTTPS configuration for enabling securely transmitting information
between the different departments of the organisation. There are different network
management protocols such as ICMP and SNMP that are used for troubleshooting the errors
in the configuration in the network.
3. Hardware
Name of the device Features and Ports Justification
Cisco 2811 Series
integrated service router
Embedded Ga or Fa port,
AUX port and
Console Port
It is selected since it is
suitable for small and
medium sized business and
provides support for different
concurrent service such as
voice and security. Its density
can be increased with the

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ICT106 DATA COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS
addition of high speed WAN
interface card slots.
Cisco Catalyst WS-
C2950S
24 Fa ports
Support of VLAN
This selected since it supports
VLAN configuration and
suitable for the small and
mid-sized offices for
selecting the right
combination of protocols for
the network edge. It can be
configured for voice and data
service and additional
security configuration can be
added for enabling security
filtering and increasing the
efficiency of the network.
Cisco WS-C3550-XL-EN
3500
24 Fa port
2 ga port
Support of VLAN
It is used for increasing the
availability of the network
and improve the quality of
service for enhancing the
different network operations.
4. Conclusion
The network solution for Top Network Company is developed following the
requirement of the organization and dividing the network based on number of user per each
department. The local area network is developed after a detailed analysis of the building floor
plan and analysing the users who are provided the permission for accessing the servers. The

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ICT106 DATA COMMUNICATIONS AND NETWORKS
local area network of the organization is created after analysis of the user needs and
identification of the network device that can be used for serving the needs of the user. For the
development of the local area network design solution for TNC a preliminary design of the
network is created and an IP addressing scheme is developed following the requirement of
number of workstation needed to be connected to each of the subnet. A research is done on
the local area network topology and protocol for the development of the network. The
hardware that are essential for the development of the network should be identified and
justification for the choice of hardware is given in the network.

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Bibliography
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CISCO Packet tracer." International Journal of Engineering Science and Innovative
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[2].Baek, Sun Uk, Hyun Ho Shin, and Dong-Ryoel Shin. "Consideration of Multipath
Routing over SDN-enabled Network." The International Conference on Innovations
in Intelligent Systems and Computing Technologies (ICIISCT2016)., 2016.
[3].de Leon, Daniel Conte, et al. "High-level and formal router policy
verification." Journal of Computing Sciences in Colleges33.1, 2017: 118-128.
[4].Karakus, Murat, and Arjan Durresi. "A survey: Control plane scalability issues and
approaches in software-defined networking (SDN)." Computer Networks 112, 2017:
279-293.
[5].Kasi, Abid Ahmed, et al. "Performance analysis of homogenous and heterogenous
network core switches." Wireless Systems and Networks (ISWSN), 2017 International
Symposium on. IEEE, 2017.
[6].Lai, Kai-Wun, Shang-Juh Kao, and Ming-Tsung Kao. "Using the depository buffer to
mitigate the communications load between SDN switches and the controller." 2018
IEEE International Conference on Applied System Invention (ICASI). IEEE, 2018.
[7].Liu, Sheng, Michael K. Reiter, and Vyas Sekar. "Flow reconnaissance via timing
attacks on SDN switches." Distributed Computing Systems (ICDCS), 2017 IEEE 37th
International Conference on. IEEE, 2017.
[8].Ngoupé, Éric Lunaud, et al. "A data model for management of network device
configuration heterogeneity." Integrated Network Management (IM), 2015 IFIP/IEEE
International Symposium on. IEEE, 2015.
[9].Piispanen, Juha. "Technical specification for federation of cyber ranges.", 2018.

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[10]. Wijnands, IJsbrand, and Kamran Raza. "mLDP Extensions for Multi-
Topology Routing.", 2018.